Best DPS after Black Mage

[Inferiae]

Oh I thought the aggro bars actually mean better dps, what's it purpose for if not to tell the tank who is about to grab hate due to massive dps? Are there skills that dps may have that just generates enmity?

Popping cooldowns, self healing, it all generates enmity. DPS also have tools to decrease their enmity (as a BRD, I always pull with Quelling Strikes up, so judging my DPS based on aggro bars is not a good idea).

Its purpose is to tell the tank who is about to grab hate, regardless of reason (healers can generate a lot of enmity through healing alone).

[Only1zbro]

Its purpose is to tell the tank who is about to grab hate, regardless of reason (healers can generate a lot of enmity through healing alone).

^ This. Damage and Enmity are two different values. If you go down the road of tanking savage or something like that it is not wholly uncommon for a healer to burst aggro off of you at certain points.

[randysquirrel]

OP, I hope you take this in the constructive way it is intended... BLM may not be for you, but I'd suggest you give it a little longer before giving up on it. you cite the movement needed in levi as one of the reasons you are thinking of moving on, but actually levi is one of the fights where you barely have to move at all. for every phase you can just turret in the middle and still hit levi, all adds that jump up and all 4 orbs. the only times you'd have to move is for the charges, but the boss is untergetable then anyway, and no one is doing any damage to him here. if you are missing casts from moving about, it is likely you are moving for things when you don't need to. if you remember the old 2.0 brds they used to run about firing for no given reason, I guess that is like the polar opposite of blm

on paper, blm is probably the easiest class to play, you can plan out nearly every single cast etc. the challenge comes from trying to adhere to that rotation as much as possible while still handling movement when (and only when! ) is absolutely necessary

[Renius]

Play BRD and you will be happy and, you DO NOT want enmity on you. You want to be left alone by mob to just hurt, set on fire, bleed them and poison them to death. I don't want to be the cause of their attack, it happens, but that is what tanks are for. Bard yep that's the way to go.

[SpeckledBurd]

Monk does around 3% more damage than Black Mage provided the Black Mage doesn't have a Bard playing foes requiem for them. Enochian is very similar to Monk's Greased Lightning in a number of ways, however Monk can't be interrupted from attack unless it's stunned or pacified, which doesn't happen very often. However Monk doesn't have a whole lot of utility unique to itself beyond traited Mantra, so all it really has going for it is high damage.

However in terms of how they feel they're basically polar opposites. Monk is a high mobility class that sustains high damage through a large number of weak to moderate hits, while Black Mage is a burst damage class that puts out hilariously huge burst with long cast times in astral fire phases.

[LunarEmerald]

BLM definitely has the best raw power. Nothing can beat the wondrous feeling of seeing those 12k+ crits.

Obviously though the mobility is an issue, and the melee classes have them beat there. I'd say that Monk really has the best consistent high-damage output, but the payoff for that is dependency on positioning and that its DPS suffers the most if you drop your combo. Ninja suffers less if a combo's dropped, but also requires the most effort juggling its buffs, debuffs, and combos along with Ninjutsu to maximize its DPS. I find Dragoon to be the happy medium with easily maintained combos, buffs and debuffs, and minimal DPS loss with a dropped combo; which is why it's my go-to for learning new fights.

At least it was until I started tanking more, but you get the idea.

12k crit? wildfire laughs at that. Right now wildfire can hit around 17k.

[ZhaneX]

12k crit? wildfire laughs at that. Right now wildfire can hit around 17k.

Maybe so, but that's once every couple of minutes to get all the buffs off CD.

Not consistently with nearly every single hit interrupted only by the occasional Fire, Blizzard 3 or Blizzard 4 to refresh buffs.
Not to mention 12k was a lowball at ilvl235-ish...

[randysquirrel]

if you're going to bring numbers into it, at least be accurate. 17k wildfires and 12k fire IVs are nowhere near the ceiling amount these moves can hit for

[Khubla_Kha]

Playing tank, I noticed only ninja and dragoon are the only classes close to ever grabbing hate from me with their dps. Because of this experience, which of these classes do you guys think can come close to BLM\\'s godlike power?

I dont mind not seeing huge numbers but I do love racing with other dps to see who can fill their aggro bar the fastest or keep it high for the longest. Thank you guys for your input!

You've never played with anyone playing any of the other dps classes well then.

[Shinji2787]

Oh I thought the aggro bars actually mean better dps, what's it purpose for if not to tell the tank who is about to grab hate due to massive dps? Are there skills that dps may have that just generates enmity?

The aggro bars can be quite deceptive since some DPS classes have abilities to lower their hate. SMN, BLM, BRD, and MCH gain access to Quelling Strikes from BRD to lower hate generated. DRG can half their hate with Elusive Jump. NIN have an ability to transfer hate they generate to a target player. I believe MNK is the only class that cannot lower the hate they generate. Additionally the hate generated can appear to be high if the tank is under-geared compared to the DPS or not properly performing their hate rotation. It can't be reliably used as a tool to determine if someone is doing high DPS because of the aforementioned issues with how the hate bar progress generates.